July 18, 2008

Place: Outside Cana. Jesus is addressing the multitudes. Exhorting them to think not of the moment, but of eternity.

Jesus: "Yea, and the black water, doth it not keep on rolling? And though it's a part of the lone star state, do the people careth? Nay, but rather they keepeth looking to the East. Oh, brothers, ask thyselves: Without love, where would you be now? For--

Guy in crowd: Excuse me. But aren't you just quoting Doobie Brothers lyrics?

Jesus: No.

Guy in crowd: Oh, I'm pretty certain you are.

Jesus: Someday you'll calll my name and I'll be gone. You'll reach out and I wont be there.

Guy in crowd: You're doing it again. He's doing it again!

Jesus: You don't know me but I'm your brother.

Guy in crowd: He's still doing it! I dare you to speak a single sentence that isn't on a Doobie Brothers album? I dare you!

A recently uncovered gnostic text is giving Biblical scholars a more rounded understanding of Jesus Christ. For example, the text describes a heretofore unmentioned miracle: at a horsehoes game outside Sychar, Christ threw 20 ringers in a row--sitting down.

“It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for any of you bitches to kick my ass at horseshoes"

They're trained to pee in the house. Late last night we walked into the bathroom and there was Rudi the Chihuahua, peeing on the floor. He lowered his leg and gave us a pissed look that said, "Don't you knock?" We felt kinda shitty about it. We even said "Sorry." But now we see it wasn't really our fault. He should have closed the door.

What could possibly be worse than a Patti Smith album? A Patti Smith DOUBLE ALBUM! Holy Frampton Comes Alive, we're all fucked! Smith's execrable post-retirement career is proof of the validity of the only true rock rule: No Comebacks! If you're an insufferably pretentious poetaster who decides to pull a Rimbaud by "retiring" to Detroit (the Abyssinia of America!) to become a homemaker, for god's sake DON'T change your mind! Did Rimbaud come slinking back from his volcano exile to write "Oh, I was undulating in the lewd impostered night"? Fuck no! And we're all the better for it. But evidently Patti thinks humanity cries out for her "seerlike" and "shamanistic" powers of healing and redemption. Seeing as how her poesy is so much spontaneous sub-beatnik swill, we've never quite figured out how Smith came to be crowned the poetess of her generation in the first place. Did the seventies really suck that bad? At 18 we thought we were too dense to "get it," but by 21 we'd figured out "it" was just Jim Morrison with breasts. Except that Jim was funny. Look, we'll be the first to admit her first album is great. But let's leave it at that, huh? Fat chance. Aided and abetted by aging rock critics (Robert Christagu, blahg!) whose kneejerk reaction is to praise every fossilized turd that poots forth from her taxidermied ass, Patti seems likely to be around forever, like a pharaoh's curse, or an albatross that babbles.

Our Littlestown correspondent Ben sent us this news item, which adds fuel to our belief that the legal age to be an asshole keeps dropping. This 5-0 is 11, and, if he keeps on causing drivers to slam on their brakes on a busy highway, risks becoming a 187.

July 17, 2008

Former attorney general John Ashcroft defended boogie boarding before a sceptical House Judiciary Committee today. "I do not now, nor have I ever, believed that boogie boarding constitutes anything other than the most fun you can have with a molded piece of hydrodynamic foam." Rep. Maxine Waters (D) of California was having none of it. "I recently met with a man who was dragged some thirty yards across a very shelly beach on his sunburned belly. A doctor had to remove the little pieces of shell with a pair of tweezers. I don't want to live in an America that condones such activities."